


Borrowed Time

by heeroluva



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Brainwashing, Cap Unfroze by HYDRA, Codependency, M/M, Mercenaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-04 20:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1792525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/pseuds/heeroluva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is a manipulative little shit.</p><p>(What if HYDRA found Steve in the ice?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Borrowed Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



“This is the last one,” Steve said as his eyes tracked the movement of the guards. Though "guards" might have been a bit too kind of a word for the majority of the men scattered across the property. Untrained thugs, hurriedly picked up off the streets as fodder was more likely.

Bucky’s laugh was loud in Steve’s ear piece. “That’s what you said the last three times.”

“I mean it this time.”

“You meant it the last three times you said it too. Just admit you’re a bleeding heart.”

Steve rolled his eyes. It was a conversation they’d had many times. He couldn’t just stand idly by and ignore the evil he knew was in world. Maybe it was part atonement for what he’d done, the innocent lives he’d taken when the choices hadn’t been his, when he’d been a dog on a leash. Maybe he was playing a role, acting the part of the good man, the super soldier that history claimed he once was. All he knew for certain was that now he had a choice, and what he chose to do or not to do mattered.

“Five o’clock and closing.”

This was supposed to be clean, Steve had gotten too close to risk exposing himself now. “Drop him.” When the silence stretched and Steve didn’t hear the expected shot, his stomach clenched. A sudden grunt and the sound of a scuffle too close for comfort left Steve holding his breath as his muscles tensed in readiness for action. When Bucky suddenly appeared at his side, Steve scowled. “I told you to stay—”

“Yeah, well you know how good I am at following orders. Can’t let you have all the fun, can I?”

“Bucky,” Steve drawled, voice low with warning and pain, his eyes not dropping to where he wanted to look, to the scars left by the bullet wounds that almost stolen Bucky from him.

“I’m healthy. I’ve been healed, and if you thinking I’m going to sit back and play spotter for one more mission and let you have all the fun—”

Steve’s hand clamped over Bucky’s mouth, his superior senses picking up the echo of footsteps nearing their their hidden location before Bucky. His heart pounded as he tried to push away the memories that suddenly assaulted him. This wasn't the time or the place, but the flashes were insistent. There’s been so much blood. Blood had never bothered him before, not his own, not anyone else's, and certainly not Bucky's, not until he’d seen far too much of Bucky’s spreading across the stained pavement. The danger had never been as real as that day when Steve had almost lost Bucky.

With HYDRA, danger had been a constant, but it hadn’t mattered. They’d had no choice. It was different now that it was just the two of them, now that they had the freedom of will to make their own choices. As much as it scared Steve, as much as he never wanted to see Bucky like that again, Steve knew he couldn’t take that away from Bucky. After all they’d been through, Steve couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ —do that to him.

The memories finally receded, as the footsteps trailed off into the distance, and Steve ignored Bucky's questioning looking. Steve’s hand dropped from Bucky’s mouth and he held up three fingers and crossed them with his other hand to indicate they had three minute window to get in and get out before they had company.

They both moved quickly, stealthily towards the impressive structure. The security system took precious seconds longer than they planned to crack. Steve made a mental note to tip Tish the next time he saw her because the blueprints she’d managed to dig up had been the real thing, and they were able to make up that lost time.

Reaching the door behind which their quarry was supposed to be stashed, a door no different than the others in the long hall, Steve nodded to Bucky who tested the knob. When it turned they both slipped into the pitch black room.

Reaching for his flashlight, Steve was momentarily blinded as light suddenly flooded the room. The unexpected sound of clapping had Steve trying to reach for his gun as he blinked rapidly to clear his sight, but he found himself frozen in place. A glance at Bucky out of the corner of his eye showed he was in the same predicament. It was a technology that HYDRA intel had said was decades away from happening. Steve wondered what else they were wrong about.

“Bravo,” a voice said from the other side of the almost blindingly white room, an ornate desk behind which a sat a tall chair, the only things in the space. “Truly watching you these past days have been inspiring. My best team would have a tough time topping you.”

The chair spun and Steve suddenly found himself face to face with a ghost. In another situation Steve might have laughed.

Nick Fury had fooled the world, had fooled them all. He looked pretty good for a dead man walking.

“I have a proposition for you both.”

“No!” Steve all but shouted, surprised that he could still talk. “We have no interest in working for SHIELD.”

“Now, now, there is no need to be so hasty. You should at least hear my offer before turning me down. Natasha, if you could please remove their weapons.”

Steve couldn’t turn his head to see who it was that pulled the weapons from his person, but when a familiar red head came into view, in betrayal he hissed, “Tish.”

Bucky still hadn’t spoken, but a glance at him showed recognition as well before his face settled into a blank mask, and Steve wondered who she’d been to Bucky because Steve knew with utter certainty that Bucky had never met her as ‘Tish’.

“We might be more willing to hear out your offer, if your hosting skills didn’t leave something to be desired,” Bucky said, finally speaking up. 

Steve glanced at Bucky again wondering what angle he was playing because there was _no_ way he could actually be considering working for SHIELD.

Fury laughed. “As you’d both have been more liable to shoot first and ask questions later, I felt it was prudent to take steps to protect myself. One can never be too careful these days.” There was a gleam of amusement in his eye as ‘Natasha’ moved to stand by his side. “Let them go.”

There was no one else in the room, but someone must have heard because Steve suddenly found himself able to move and stepped closer to Bucky despite knowing it was a show of weakness. It was all he could do to not step in front of him.

Bucky didn’t glance at Steve as he said, “We’re listening.”

Fury walked around the desk and leaned back against it before saying, “We’ve been watching you both for some time. SHIELD is still in a rather precarious position, and you both have a certain skill set that we could use right now.”

Steve opened his mouth to say no, say that they wanted nothing to do with them, that they weren’t going back to that, but Bucky’s metal fingers wrapped around his wrist, freezing the word in his throat before it formed. Steve forced himself to calm, to follow Bucky’s lead in this. Bucky had always been the more rational of the two of them, the one to think things through; Steve had a bad habit of rushing right in. 

“We’ve had enough of being _used_ for more than one lifetime. We won’t kill for you,” Bucky said, voice calm, cool, _icy_.

Fury’s smile widened, and Steve’s fist clenched with the desire to wipe it off his face.

“Good because I’m not asking you to kill anyone.”

“Enough games. What are you asking?” Bucky demanded.

“We’d like to hire you on as consultants. Strictly intel and training, no field work. You both have good instincts, and despite the numerous lucrative offers you’ve received, you never took a mission that would harm someone who didn’t deserve it, you go out of your way to protect innocents. You have morals. In this line of work, especially where you both came from—it’s unexpected. We need more people like you. People who can’t be tempted or swayed, but who know what it’s like on the other side.”

For one horrifying moment, Steve thought Bucky was going to say yes. They’d talked about this. No more masters, no more chains, and this one, even as scattered as it was, could be even worse than HYDRA.

“How long do we have to consider it?”

“There is no time limit, but I’m sure you understand that the world waits for no one.”

Bucky nodded and said, “We’ll be in contact.” 

It was Bucky who moved forward to collect their weapons under Natasha’s watchful eye, Bucky who ushered them out of the facility and off the now seemingly empty property and into to their waiting car, and it was Bucky who finally broke the heavy silence when they were miles down the road, his metal fingers curling over Steve’s tight grip on the steering wheel. 

“It’s your choice.”

Steve slammed on the breaks, pulling to the side road. “No, dammit. No, you don’t get to put this on me. I can’t make this decision for us. It has to be _our_ decision, not _my_ decision.” In their years together on their own, away from HYDRA, away from the wipes, Bucky often deferred to him, especially at the beginning. It hadn’t always been like that from what Steve could piece together from the fragments of his memories. 

Bucky’s fingers pried Steve’s off the steering while, the plastic beginning to groan in protest under his punishing grip. He curled their fingers together, intertwined with metal. Steve knew that it bothered Bucky sometimes, the strangeness of it, but it had never mattered to Steve because it was just another part of Bucky. 

Eyes moving from their joined hands to Bucky’s face, Steve froze almost forgetting to breathe. It was as though they were in another time, another place, and Bucky looked so strangely young, his face so open. 

Bucky’s lips were twisted into a grin, his teeth bared and eyes crinkled with mirth. “You don’t seem to understand that my _choice_ has always been you. From the day we killed them all and ran, it’s all been you. You were the only good constant in my life. Despite the torture, the pain, the times of empty nothingness when I had no memories of you, no memories of anything except what they’d programed into me, I had a hope that had no explanation, but I’d see you, and I’d _know_ you. You were safe. You were home. It made no sense, and I know HYDRA hated it, but it was the one thing they couldn’t take from me. Our minds didn’t remember,” Bucky leaned closer, “but our bodies did.” 

Steve signed against Bucky’s lips, knowing better than to allow Bucky to distract him like this, and after a moment he forced himself to pull back, ignoring Bucky’s frown. He pulled their intertwined fingers up and placed a kiss on each of Bucky’s knuckles. 

“It was the same for me, but it scared me. Still does, ” Steve said, his voice cracking with emotion. “Just how much faith you have in me. I’m not infallible. More than anything, I want you happy, but I don’t want you to look back and resent me or worse hate me for making the wrong choice.” 

Bucky snorted. “There is nothing in the world you could do that would make me hate you.” Bucky paused, pushing a lock of hair that had escaped his bun behind his ear as he tilted his head to the side as though considering. “Let’s take a vacation.” 

“A vacation?” Steve said slowly, wondering if he’d heard wrong. That certainly wasn’t something he’d ever expected Bucky to suggest. “What, you want to visit Vegas? See the sights, do the touristy thing?” Steve asked incredulous.

Bucky’s eyes went dark as he closed the distance between them again. “I was thinking more along the lines of a nice beach, miles of nothing but the sand and sun and us, of your dick in my ass and not having to worry about being too loud.”

Steve shifted in his seat as his pants suddenly seemed to be too tight. Yeah, that was an idea he could get behind in more than one way, but it didn’t solve anything. “And after?”

Bucky’s lips brushed against Steve’s as he talked. “And after, we do whatever the fuck we want. If you want to tell SHIELD to shove their offer, then I’ll be there with you. I’m with you to the end of the line. No matter where it leads.”

It was stupidly sentimental, and Steve tried not to let the weight of Bucky settling on his lap, knees on either side of Steve’s thighs, distract him but he was quickly failing.

As Bucky’s fingers worked the fastenings of Steve’s pants, Bucky said, “I’m exactly where I want to be. Sometimes I think we’re living on borrowed time, that HYDRA or SHIELD or some government organization will come and scoop us up again, that I’ll forget all of this, and I don’t want to waste a moment of it.”

Steve’s arms rose, pulling Bucky’s tight against his chest, pinning Bucky’s arms between their bodies as their mouths crashed together. Maybe it was borrowed time, but Bucky was right. They shouldn’t waste it.


End file.
